Qualitative Research Methods

1
Qualitative Research Methods
2
What is qualitative research?

• Research that
• focuses on how individuals and groups view and
  understand the world and construct meaning out of
  their experiences.
• focuses on the understanding of research
  phenomena in situ, within their
  naturally-occurring context(s).
• teases out the meaning(s) the phenomena have for
  the actors or participants.
• Aims to understand the processes (e.g. why and
  how and which decisions are made) rather than
  just the outcomes (e.g. dropping-out of school or
  not).

3
Three basic data gathering techniques

• Participant observation, or ethnographic
  fieldwork
• Interviewsindividual or group
• Content analysis of social artefacts (usually
  documents, but also photographs)
• Each of these can be carried out in more or less
  structured and more or less participatory ways

4
What methods are available for use in qualitative
research?

• Case studies
• Focus groups
• In-depth interviews
• Semi-unstructured or unstructured interviews
• Life histories, oral history
• Community mapping, time-lines
• Observation, fieldwork
• Diaries, other personal documents
• Time-use studies
• Life-line analysis

5
Why do qualitative research?

• If we dont know the contours of the topic, it
  can be exploratory research
• If we are interested in processes, sequences of
  events and reasons people give to explain what
  happened
• If we want to explore the relationships between
  people and their effects on actions
• If we want to explore in depth the meanings
  people themselves use to make sense of their own
  lives

6
What is not Qualitative Social Research?

• Quantitative research (e.g. large-scale
  questionnaire-based surveys) but are there some
  qualitative elements even here?
• Pure Observation (e.g. behind one-way mirrors)
  qualitative researchers want to understand the
  meanings of what they see
• Literary research (e.g. purely text-based
  analyses)

7
Relationship to other methods

• Studies or particular sections of projects may
  rely more heavily on one data-gathering method
  some may reject any kind of quantification, while
  others count some events or views for
  particular purposes, or are designed to
  complement other social research (e.g. surveys).
• So, there is no necessary opposition between
  quantitative and qualitative methods one
  difference is between depth (learning a lot about
  a few people), and breadth (learning less about a
  lot of people).

8
Possible forms of research

• Purely quantitative (e.g. national census)
• Qualitative within quantitative (e.g. some
  questions that are not pre-coded)
• Quantitative within qualitative (e.g. some
  background questions that allow counting)
• Pure qualitative (e.g. some conversation
  analysis)
• Synergies between linked research

9
Possible synergies between qualitative and
quantitative research

• Qualitative before quantitative
• to test question design,
• to learn local terms,
• to check acceptability of topics (like piloting)
• to generate hypotheses for quantitative testing
• Qualitative after quantitative
• to test hypotheses based on correlations
• to understand puzzling findings

10
In practice?

• Very hard to keep quantitative and qualitative
  studies linked
• different time constraints
• different theoretical paradigms
• status differences and conflicts

11
Key requirements of qualitative approaches

• We should not invent the viewpoint of the people
  we are studying
• We should only attribute to them ideas about the
  world they actually hold, in order that we can
  truly understand their motives, reasons and
  actions.
• We want to discover the subjective qualities of
  the worlds these people live in.

12
Uses of qualitative research

• to try to "give voice" to marginalized groups
• to formulate new interpretations of the
  historical and cultural significance of various
  events
• to advance theory.
• Although in-depth, empirical qualitative studies
  may capture important facts missed by more
  general, quantitative studies, policy-makers need
  to be persuaded of the generalisability of their
  findings. Strategic (or purposive) sampling may
  help with this.

13
Issues of reliability and validity

• The qualitative researcher (in some important
  ways) is the research tool
• Need for reflexivity by the researcher
• Need to report on how positionality matters
• Strengths validity is maximisable
• Weaknesses reliability is an issue that will
  continue to concern some audiences for our
  findings. How can we engage with this?